Scouting America is a nearly completely volunteer organization. Their technology is generally about 20 years behind because it’s all pieced together by volunteers that “kinda done something like this for my company once”.

I’m just talking about a human capability standpoint. Maybe over time a person just develops the stamina to do it, but I’m pretty wiped after a solid 9-hour day. Honestly, my productivity collapses after about 5 hours of solid focused work.

I honestly can’t imagine how someone could work 9-9-6.

That blows my mind.

Do you feel guilty when you are paid for your work?

No. You are an employee and you work and you are entitled to payment for your work.

Same goes for government assistance. You are a citizen and you are entitled to that assistance. It’s literally no different. Our democracy set that assistance aside for you. It’s yours, and until Congress changes the rules, you are entitled to it.

The competency factor is something that online commentors greatly undervalue. The US, for all it’s faults in many places, is extremely competent. It’s an institutional world history anomaly. No one comes close.

And that’s the source of the “Greatness” of America that the billionaire-bro class just doesn’t understand and is actively poisoning. They think they are going to own “American Greatness”, but they don’t understand, can’t understand, that they are actively poisoning the institutions that made them rich. They are turning America into Russia (that is literally their expressed goal), but when they do there went be another America left to keep the world order in place.

To circle back to the Su-57, I don’t believe any of it’s advertised capabilities are real. Which is why everyone that was going to order them (India) has greatly pulled back their orders.

And I promise you, the F-35 is definitely not bullshit. But if the programs and institutions that support it aren’t diligently maintained, then in 20 years every plane will be worthless.

The decay in their institutions started much earlier than 2 years ago. At my most generous, it started immediately after the fall of the USSR. But the truth is that a culture of grift has existed in Russian culture for centuries. The Soviets were just as guilty of it as the Czars were and the current oligarchy is now.

I personally don’t believe Putin believes Russia has a single viable nuke remaining in it’s arsenal.

My primary evidence for this suspicion is that for all Putin’s consistent nuclear sabre rattling, he’s never done the one thing that would really rattle the sabre: conduct a nuclear weapons test. If he had a nuke to test he would have tested it just to scare off the West.

The text of the matter is that building a nuclear bomb really isn’t that difficult. A reasonably well funded university physics department anywhere in the world could probably build one. Having a nuclear weapons program is another matter. That’s orders of magnitude more difficult and more expensive. Honestly, I would be really surprised if the USA had half of the viable nuclear weapons it claims. Much less Russia.

Aerodynamics are obviously very important in the sport, but I doubt it’s that extreme.

They couldn’t maintain a viable tire rotation program with all the grift and corruption. They definitely don’t have a viable stealth fighter her program.

… Because they don’t want Ukraine to bomb them all.

Why is this headline a question?

What’s going on is that in the Olympics the difference between Gold and nothing can literally be centimeters.

If there is something an athlete in the Olympics can do to give themselves another 3 centimeters they will do it.